1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a compound-eye image pickup device utilizing an imaging optical system including plural image sensor devices and plural lenses.
2. Related Background Art
For the purpose of generating a wide panoramic image or a high definition image, there is recently proposed a compound-eye image pickup device provided with plural image pick-up systems, each composed of an imaging optical system and an image sensor device and adapted to take the image of a common object, whereby a synthesized image is generated from image signals obtained from the image sensor devices.
For obtaining a panoramic image, there is known a method of simultaneously taking plural images in an object field with plural image pickup systems, then extracting a same object present in different images and connecting the images based on the relative positional information of said object in the images, thereby generating a synthesized panoramic image.
Also for obtaining a high definition image, there is known a method of extracting a same object present in different images in a similar manner as in the panoramic image formation, and effecting interpolation based on the relative positional information of said object in the images, thereby generating anew a high definition image. An image pickup device based on the above-mentioned principle is provided, as shown in FIG. 1, with a left-hand side image pickup system 10L and a right-hand side image pickup system 10R which are used to take the image of an object 11, and a left image I.sub.L obtained by the left-hand side image pickup system 10L and a right image I.sub.R obtained by the right-hand side image pickup system 10R are subjected in an image processing unit 12, to extraction of corresponding points and synthesis, whereby an output image I.sub.out of a higher definition in comparison with the case of taking the object with a single image pickup system.
However, the above-mentioned method of obtaining the synthesized panoramic image by extracting the same object present in different images and connecting the different images based on the relative positional information of the object in the images has been associated with a drawback of requiring a very long time in acquiring the relative positional information mentioned above.